The Time That Binds
by greyrondo
Summary: What does Fai think of when he drinks? Kurogane finds the answer late into the night in the country of Clow. One-shot.


Disclaimer: I don't own Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles.

In the country of Clow where each day seems to play itself over and over again, Kurogane and Fai separate themselves from Syaoran and Mokona. Please enjoy and review!

**The Time that Binds**

For residing in a desert country, the mother and son who had let them stay overnight—again—had done a fair job of keeping the sand from creeping into the floors, the rugs, the rooms, as if they had managed to suspend an hourglass.

He wasn't worried about the possibility of their curiosity, but Kurogane didn't speak until Fai had closed the door behind him.

"There's a reason that you made the boy sleep in a separate room tonight instead of having us all together like last night, right?"

Fai hadn't moved from the door. With an opaque smile, he settled his spine against the crack between the door and the wall and kept one hand on the doorknob. It looked oddly as if he were trying to keep something out of the room and hide himself in it at the same time.

"Which tonight are you speaking about, I wonder?" Fai mused airily. "That question is one reason we've separated, yes. It's a pity we have to wait until morning for those pastries, though. At this rate, we'll never get to taste them. They looked lovely, don't you think?"

When Kurogane didn't say anything, he added, "I suppose you're not going to let your enthusiasm for them show, are you… Kuro-tan?"

Kurogane flinched at the hollow echo of Fai's voice. "Our hosts aren't interested in listening in on our conversation. They accepted your lie at the meal, that you weren't hungry. You can drop the act."

Fai's fey mask took on its darker counterpart as his smile faded. It was still no less paralyzing to see him age decades in that small dropped gesture than it had been the first few times that Kurogane asked questions that couldn't be easily deflected.

And just as having only one eye must have altered Fai's depth perception, being able to pierce past only one eye's insistently glassy façade became something so much harder for Kurogane.

"I'm sorry," Fai said quietly, collapsing into himself as his gaze fled to the place where the wall met the floor. He slouched and sunk down the door until it seemed that his awkwardly lanky frame wanted to fold into two. "It just slipped out. That mother and child were so kind and hospitable to us, I was just reminded of an earlier time… do you remember Hanshin, Kurogane?"

"I hadn't even noticed that you'd used one of your silly nicknames until you brought attention to it just now."

Fai closed his eyes. A subtle gesture in itself, but one that Kurogane had noticed more and more.

"So I was wondering—"

"So how many days—"

They both stopped, and in the beat of silence, Kurogane took possession of the stalled quiet. "How many days has it been, Fai?"

Fai shrugged. "Well, that's why I wanted to talk to you. Do you believe that time is standing still in this country, or is it progressing forward with the illusion of repetition—"

"How many days, Fai."

After a stunned pause, Fai gave a smile that brought something remorseful to his eye. "Something tells me you've been keeping better track than I have. I smell your blood on you, where your skin meets that mechanical arm. It isn't suited to you as well as it could be, am I right?"

"Don't think that it's enough to acknowledge what I'm talking about and then change the subject," Kurogane said and shook his head. He turned away from Fai and paced a few steps in the small room.

"Tell me, does it hurt more than 'yesterday'?" Fai asked as Kurogane distractedly worked his sleeve around his mechanical arm, and draped the black garment over his armor, which he had shed before the meal. With nothing to hide the place where skin met metal, the smudges of blood along the line of his shoulder glistened darkly in the lowered lamplight.

He could practically hear Fai's lips part against his will. "Don't do this to me," whispered Fai pleadingly.

"That witch had warned me that you might choose not to drink. I figured that after the first time, I didn't have anything to worry about. But you didn't drink in Japan. After everything that happened in your world. You're not immortal, you know. How are you still walking around?"

Fai chuckled. "Well, perhaps you've noticed that I'm not, not right now." Kurogane hadn't noticed until then, but Fai had sunk to the floor entirely in the time since he had caught the scent of blood in the air. "Are you testing my control?"

"Like Ashura?" Kurogane said quickly, too carelessly. He regretted it immediately; Fai didn't need to think, he needed to drink blood.

But Fai said nothing in response, only bit his lower lip with subtly pointed teeth. Fai hissed an exhale as the sting of metal being unsheathed sounded in the air and Kurogane nestled the blade into the soft bite of his inner wrist, as if Fai didn't want to breathe in the smell of iron.

"He shed your blood to force me to react. You'd resort to the same measures?" Fai asked in soft, starving despair.

"It's for your own good. When it comes to people like you, Fai, sometimes 'for your own good' leads people to drastic measures. You were perfectly fine with this arrangement earlier. What happened?"

"Ashura," Fai sighed as the first drop of Kurogane's blood splattered onto the floor. His stare instinctively snapped to the source of the faint sound, but then winced away. With weary effort, he gathered himself to his feet.

Kurogane figured that it hadn't been Fai's intent to pitch forward instead of stand. He moved quickly and caught Fai as he fell, and sat down on the edge of the thin bedcover cradling Fai between the curve of his shoulder and his mechanical arm.

Before Fai could gather his meandering senses, Kurogane pressed his dripping wrist to Fai's lips and the embrace was complete before Kurogane had even realized how tightly his arms were locked around Fai's waist.

With a muffled, animalistic gasp, Fai lapped up the blood that had flowed onto Kurogane's skin before settling his mouth over the cut itself. But then as suddenly as he submitted to slaking his thirst, Fai pulled back.

Kurogane exhaled shortly in worn-down aggravation. "Fai, I'm done. I'm not playing this game anymore with you. I've let you do what you wanted instead of what you needed for too long. You're not going anywhere yet."

But Fai shook his head. "Isn't it true that every time you kill someone, you lose your strength? Here I am, drinking your life away. What happens to you when you turn your sword against yourself?"

This was Fai's bitter, lonely game. Kurogane wasn't going to let him turn logic in on itself until he starved to death. "Don't you remember what that witch said?"

"That's right. You're compensated well for this," Fai murmured thoughtfully. "I live longer, and you get to live longer too. Is it worth it?"

"Don't think of it that way. Because that's not how I think of it."

"I can't weaken you like this. For all we know, Fei Wong Reed could burst into this room any minute—"

"And I can't weaken you like this," Kurogane insisted. "You're my responsibility now. If I say you're going to drink, then you're going to drink. And don't wait too long, or my blood will drip on my clothes. You think the smell of my blood from my shoulder bothers you, wait until we're walking around Clow tomorrow and you can sense it all over me."

Just as Kurogane gave some thought to what he had just said, Fai smirked teasingly. But it disappeared like a mirage, so Kurogane wondered if he had imagined it.

If Fei Wong Reed did come into their room right at that moment, Kurogane felt that it wouldn't hurt to show the man that his actions had consequences. But knowing him, Kurogane wondered if he wouldn't enjoy the superiority of watching Fai lap at Kurogane's wrist like some tortured animal.

Fai resigned himself to Kurogane's chest, and breathed in deeply the smell of Kurogane's blood. "I get stronger by drinking your blood, just like Ashura drank up people's lives. Every day, my bloodlust just makes the sensation of your taste more and more insatiable. If I drink from you now, one day I'll want to stop but I won't be able to. I'll sit back and watch myself drink you dry—I don't want to become a monster. I don't want to ask you to kill me."

"So you think I'll be better off if you do it yourself? You told me you were over this. You lied to us! To me," Kurogane added. "Again."

"I'm sorry," Fai whispered. "It was just easier. We have more important things to do than make a fuss about me. What I'm going through is nothing compared to Syaoran's pain…"

"Don't say 'sorry', just—" Kurogane began, but didn't know where he was going. "You're thirsty. That doesn't make you a monster. We're in Clow for a reason, but we still stop for food and rest. To do anything less is irresponsible. We have something important to do, but you don't see us neglecting ourselves. Otherwise, there's no reason for coming out of this alive."

"And while you're thinking about Syaoran's pain," Kurogane said as his voice died a little, "why don't you spend some time on mine? We can't help Syaoran's pain, not yet anyways. But you can relieve mine right here and now. So do it."

Fai bowed his head and time seemed to halt as he ran his tongue over the trickle of blood that coursed down Kurogane's arm. Some of it had already dripped onto Kurogane's knee. At the pulse of Kurogane's wrist, Fai paused.

"The wound's beginning to close," Fai said with a breathless and relieved laugh.

Kurogane knew that trickle hadn't been enough. Not after what they had been through in the lonely world that had been Fai's home. "How thirsty are you? Don't lie to me."

Fai didn't look at him, but Kurogane could see the hesitation in Fai's gaze as Fai withheld the honest answer. So without waiting for another lie, Kurogane shifted Fai in his locked arms and tilted his head slightly forward and away, exposing his throat.

"Help me, Fai," he ordered. He exhaled, and closed his eyes as Fai's arms wrapped around his neck. Fai's bloodstained lips lighted upon his throat and Kurogane shuddered before he felt his skin break. It had nothing to do with the pain, and everything to do with the brush of Fai's lips and Kurogane's sudden question in his mind as to how Fai had interpreted Kurogane's promise to return to Japan.

If Fai noticed the shudder, he didn't let on. Whether it was the thirst's instinct or Kurogane's will, Fai clung to the trickle of blood, only breaking away to breathe.

"You're not a monster," Kurogane sighed as he wrapped his previously-bleeding arm around Fai's shoulders. They remained there in fragile peace until Fai pulled away, his vampire's kiss sealing the incision.

Fai sighed, sounding both content and anxious. "Did I really help to heal your pain?" he asked uncertainly. "Or did you just say that to make me feel better…?"

Even as Fai was right there in his arms, Kurogane felt him falling away. Fai's mind must have gone somewhere far in order to coexist with what his body needed. Even after Celes, he didn't know enough to be sure if Fai was distancing himself in order to protect Kurogane.

Because there was always the possibility that behind the earlier teasing, the knowing smiles, there was nothing.

But Fai needed him now, and not just the way that Syaoran needed Sakura. If Fai wanted to live, then his life physically depended on Kurogane being a part of it. A little blood was a paltry price to pay in exchange for fulfilling the wish that Kurogane hadn't dared voice aloud to Yuuko. No matter where Fai's mind wandered, as long as he drank, that connection would be enough to sustain not only Fai, but Kurogane as well.

"I wasn't lying to you," Kurogane said truthfully to Fai, even as he knew that hiding the intent behind his actions was a deeper betrayal than Fai's lies.

Fai didn't smile, but something restrained behind his gaze let go.

"Kuro-sama…?" Fai asked as he licked away the stray beads of blood that had remained on Kurogane's throat. "You know, I've been meaning to tell you this for quite some time, but—"

Whatever he was going to say in that moment was lost. He looked up, sharply distracted. Kurogane felt suddenly overcome with a wave tugging him below his consciousness.

"Magic cast to make us sleep, or…?" Fai murmured anxiously, and in the instant that his eyes closed and his head dropped against Kurogane's chest, time rushed forward once again.

Once again, this place called Clow had taken ahold of their lives. In the 'morning' that followed, Syaoran and Mokona woke up in the emptied house and, panicked, they burst into Kurogane and Fai's room.

Just as Syaoran had found himself sleeping on the floor with only the faintest memory of slumber pulling him under against his will, he found the two sleeping where they had fallen sideways on top of the comforter. Fai's lips, still stained with blood, had left a smear over Kurogane's heart.

Syaoran quietly backed out into the hall and shut the door.

"So Fai didn't want me to see him drink," Syaoran said softly to Mokona, who had perched on his shoulder. "That's why we separated last night."

"Maybe he didn't want you to get the wrong idea about them," Mokona replied in a murmur.

"What's that supposed to mean…?"

"I think that Fai wouldn't have been bothered with you watching him drink," Mokona said thoughtfully. "But if you had all shared a room, they would have made sure to do it quickly and get it over with. It might have appeared to you that the only reason he is close to Kurogane is because he needs Kurogane's blood for his body to survive."

"That's not true, though, is it?" Syaoran wondered. "I mean, after all they've been through. There's no way that something callous like that could be the final result."

"Of course not, silly. But you know how Fai worries too much about unnecessary things sometimes. Because the big things scare him, in case he can't fix them, or in case he finds a way to blame himself for a situation made worse."

"You noticed too," Syaoran replied softly. "He hasn't moved forward yet, like he said he did."

"I was thinking," Mokona said, "that maybe it would be good for both of them if Fai didn't go back to his home country after this."

"Good for Kurogane?" Syaoran asked with surprise. "What… what makes you feel so strongly about that?"

Mokona nodded in affirmation, but didn't answer. "You get dressed; I'll wake them up. It's okay if I find them like that," Mokona added. "Let's find Sakura and Fei Wong Reed. And no one's going to die. Everyone's going to make it, because the person who promised he would return to his world isn't going back to that world alone. Now that our paths have crossed, we have to do everything that we can to keep them bound together."


End file.
